I was watching an old video regarding training (old school style) and they mentioned that you have to wear a bad shield so that you take "spark" hits, because "smoke puff" hits doesn't raise your shielding skill.
And hearing that I also got reminded how I was told the same when I was a kid, that I needed a bad shield and take spark or bleed hits to gain shielding.
But I'm pretty sure that's *not* how it works. I have an ironman character that I won't allow offline training on, and I've been training on Trolls and other weak monsters that *only* do smoke puffs on me, yet my shielding is higher than my melee, so smoke puffs clearly work.
So I'm generally just asking, did shielding change? Did it used to not level up on smoke puffs, or was that just some old misinformation that people spread back in the day?